OHIO Court will rule on Flask license

Once the resignation is accepted, the court will drop its probe of the former MVSD director. By DAVID SKOLNICK VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER YOUNGSTOWN -- The Ohio Supreme Court could rule in as early as two weeks to accept the permanent surrender of Edward A. Flask's law license. Flask sent an affidavit to the Supreme Court voluntarily resigning as an attorney. The court, which indefinitely suspended his license in October pending an investigation, will cancel the probe once it formally accepts Flask's resignation. That could take anywhere from two to eight weeks, said Jonathan Coughlan, the court's disciplinary counsel. "... He could never come back to practice again," Coughlan said. "If the court accepts it, we'll just dismiss the case because he'd no longer be a lawyer. All I can do is deal with his license. If he doesn't have one anymore, [the investigation] is irrelevant." About Flask case: Flask, a former Mahoning Valley Sanitary District director, was sentenced in September to 90 days in Trumbull County Jail by a visiting judge who found him guilty of nine charges related to improperly accepting $2 million in cash and gifts from vendors who did business with the water agency. Shortly after Flask reported to jail Oct. 12, the Supreme Court began its investigation. State law requires attorneys convicted of a felony to be suspended pending a review by the high court. After getting out of jail in January, Flask was placed on three years' probation. Flask, 59, who served on the MVSD board from October 1986 to August 1997, was at one time a partner in Flask and Policy with Cleveland Browns president Carmen Policy, in one of the Mahoning Valley's premiere law firms. Flask, a lawyer since 1966, lost nearly all of his business after being indicted in August 1999 and stopped practicing a short time later.